Individuals who work during the 9-to-5 hours typically are not at home when home access is desired for delivery of goods or for performance of home repair services. Work schedules for many people make it difficult, if not impossible, to be at home to accept goods being delivered or allow service people into their homes. In addition to delivery or service individuals, it may be desirable to permit some routine or frequent visitors to have conditional access to one's home, such as a home cleaning service or dry-cleaning pick-up and drop-off, to note a few.
Furthermore, when such delivery and service appointments are made, it is often requested that an individual be available for delivery or service during a time period lasting several hours. When trying to arrange a time for delivery and services, these providers usually require someone to be at the home for nearly half a day and will not, or cannot, pinpoint a specific arrival time.
Many homes have entry systems which control various access points for the home, such as, for example, an automatic garage door operator which raises and lowers the garage door after it receives an appropriate signal from the associated control circuitry. Generally, such control systems include input devices such as wall mounted keypads, hand held radio frequency transmitters, or simple actuating buttons. In some installations, security measures are imposed to prevent unauthorized access to the garage area. For example, a keypad mounted on an exterior wall may require the entry of a secrete code to permit operation of the garage door operator. Additionally, garage door operator hand held transmitter units may communicate with the control circuitry of the garage door operator via encoded signals, thereby attempting to ensure that only authorized vehicles are granted access to the garage area. Further, these types of systems are not limited to garage door operators but maybe extended to entry gates, alarm systems, or even the front door lock mechanism of a house itself.
With a garage door entry system a homeowner could give the delivery service a programmable code that can be entered in a keypad on an outside wall of the door. Nonetheless, for security reasons, a homeowner may not wish to give such third parties a permanent means to gain access to their home. However, the codes and/or transmitters given to third parties do not typically require any further verification. Thus, one seeking to gain unauthorized accesses need only to obtain the code and/or transmitter from the authorized third party to gain access.
As suggested by the availability of numerous features for electronic devices, consumers desire a primary wireless device that can function as a cell phone, a personal data assistant, a camera, and a GPS device, among other desired functionalities. To that end, consumers would like to have the ability to use to their primary wireless devices to gain access to their homes such as through wireless operation of their garage doors or security system. However, the use of such long-range communication devices has a variety of attendant concerns. With long-range capabilities, the potential for improper and inadvertent access grows. For example, it is not uncommon for an improperly stowed cell phone to accidentally transmit a telephone call. Further, if the signal transmitted was sent to an entry control system, it could operate a movable barrier. In such circumstances, the homeowner may be miles away from the location and may be completely unaware of the activation of the movable barrier operator.